Hi all,
A friend and I travelled to Tonga a few months ago for a shot at popping for GT's, we do quite a bit of topwater fishing here in NZ for kingfish with great success and were both very curious to experience how the legendary GT's fight compared to big NZ kingies.
For our trip we decided to travel to the island of Vava'u staying at Talihau Beach and fishing with Kurt Carlson who own and operates Poppin Tonga and Luckys Beach Houses.
After having our trip postponed twice due to the extreme weather they had been experiencing (quite nasty cyclones) we were absolutely over the moon with the weather forecast we had ahead of us. 5 days of fishing on glassy calm seas with the sun baking every day!.
Here is a pic of our fishing platform for the trip...Lupo which is a 5.5m Boston Whaler.
During our 5 day trip we explored several of the small islands and reef areas and threw poppers and stickbaits at everything we thought looked fishy...which of course was every place we saw.
A couple of pics of places we fished...
The first few days saw a variety of fish fall victim to various poppers and stickbaits....
small GTs...
Bluefin Trevally
Baracoutta
Emperor Sweetlips
Red Bass
Green Jobfish
Flowery Cod
We stopped very briefly for a quick jig over a bit of a reef which produced 3 different species for 3 drops of the jig then it went dead. One of the fish was a really awesome looking Black Trevally....
The GT's we were chasing proved elusive for the first few days with only small ones eating our offerings....that was until we got a few days away from the new moon and then a few bigger ones came out to play.
I caught a couple up to size M and got smoked by one size large specimen in tiger country which I couldn't stop on the very last day
My mate Steve had a very quite first few days but man did he make up for it!! landing 5 over 30kg and one measuring 1.5m and estimated at 45-50kg (pretty awesome when the current Tongan record is 43kg) We released all GT's unharmed.
All in all it was a really cool place to go as an introduction to GT fishing and would definitely go again. I would highly recommend to others to contact Kurt from Poppin Tonga if this sort of fishing is of interest to you. Kurt is a great skipper and works bloody hard to find the fish and make your stay at his place a memorable one.
GT Fishing in Vava'u, Tonga - Giant TrevallyCheers,
Josh
